Momenta Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (MNTA)

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This might help some posters & their families who are confronting this particular illness. Furthermore, we know that MNTA is developing several drugs for autoimmune indications.

Doctors thought she was psychotic, but her body was attacking her brain August 29 - CNN

(Watch video & read article.)

Many patients have been misdiagnosed with schizophrenia and other mental illnesses, Dalmau said. Some have been admitted to psychiatric units, where they were given medications, electroconvulsive therapies and other treatments that probably made their symptoms worse, he added.

Still, Lennox wonders what portion of mental illnesses, like schizophrenia, can be traced back to medical causes. And while the question isn't without controversy, doctors agree that NMDARE is more common than previously thought.

"In 2007, we have around close to 10 cases," Najjar recalled. "In 2010, there was a presentation of around a hundred cases, and now we have ... thousands and thousands of cases.

“The rising incidence of (autoimmune encephalitis) is because of the rise in awareness.”

http://www.cnn.com/2017/08/29/health/brain-on-fire-nmda-encephalitis/index.html

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MNTA - Novel Drugs for Autoimmune Indications

Autoimmune diseases result from a dysfunction of the immune system in which the body attacks its own organs, tissues, and cells. To date, physicians and scientists have identified more than 80 clinically distinct autoimmune diseases1. Several are well known, including rheumatoid arthritis, multiple sclerosis, type 1 diabetes, and systemic lupus erythematosus; others are less familiar, including myasthenia gravis, Sjögren’s syndrome, dermatomyositis, and pemphigus. Collectively, these diseases, as a category, affect 50 million Americans1. Additionally, autoimmune diseases are reported to be on the rise in the U.S. and around the world, making this poorly understood category of disease a public health crisis at levels comparable to heart disease and cancer.

Momenta is pioneering improved therapeutics for patients with autoimmune diseases, and in particular, those with autoantibody-driven disease. We are applying our complex systems analysis platform to identify potential improvements we can design into presently marketed complex mixture drugs. By evaluating their interaction with biologic systems, we can obtain an enhanced understanding of their function to identify biological activities we can exploit. This is the approach behind our research efforts to utilize the sialylation of intravenous immunoglobulin, or IVIg, and our program to develop a
recombinant Fc version of IVIg.

http://www.momentapharma.com/pipeline/novel-autoimmune-drugs.php?m281